Another Hugo Update . . . Miéville For The Win!

Who's Gonna Win the Hugo?  This Guy . . . 

It says it on the cover: "A fully achieved work of art."  These are Ursula K. Le Guin's words, and I have a hard time thinking of someone better qualified to make that sort of pronouncement.  Moreover, China Miéville reads a bit like Le Guin at her best.  I don't mean to compare the two, but that same sense that the author is doing something truly original not only with the story but with the bounds of language itself.  

Because Embassytown is a story about language.  About what it means to relate meaning through simulacra, these noises that we emit and, arbitrarily and through common use, agree actually have meaning.  Much of the story revolves around Avice, a human woman who has become a simile in the language of the Arikenes, the indigenes of strange alien world where the village of Embassytown has been constructed.  In this alien tongue, only two things are immediately apparent--they cannot lie and they cannot understand us.

In order to facilitate communication, the Arikene (or Hosts, as the story calls them) enact elaborate rituals to create new ideas.  Avice, the protagonist, is a particularly useful simile.  Notorious for being the only member of this society to have ever left and returned to the godforsaken hinterland, she bears the fame of her similification uneasily, especially when she realizes that she has created a paradox within the Host society that may very well tear it apart.

Finally, human beings have reached a partial solution to the communication breakdown.  The solution, however, requires human cloning, techno-pyschic pair-bonding, and psychological training to allow two individuals to think--and then speak--with the same mind.  These pair-bonded individuals provide the vital link between the human colonists of this world and the alien indigenes, whose cooperation and largess they require to make any sort of life there.

Then something unexpected happens, and the very fabric of their society is torn apart.

If that last sentence sounds a bit melodramatic, that's because it is; but it's hard to express the sudden turn that Miéville weaves into the narrative without divulging much of what makes the book so unique.  Because the sudden and terrifying arrival to their society is not all that terrifying.  The world itself changes so that you can divide the book easily into before and after.  This is the type of dramatic turn that is both unexpected and deeply satisfying, because it is both internally consistent with the fictional world that he has created, and subtle enough that you probably didn't see it coming--yet nonetheless had to have been.

Embassytown isn't as abstruse as some of Miéville's earlier works, especially Perdido Street Station and The Scar.  Some of the flair and gusto is gone, leaving a stripped-down story comprised of pure characterization and plot, and the bare essentials of world-building.  Don't get me wrong, what's there is pure Miéville and is all the more delightful for the economy with which he parses the world to the reader.

In the end though, Embassytown is a gentle meditation on language, both its limits and its potentially infinite variety; as such, it transcends genre expectations and revels in the delight of fine storytelling.    

Hugo Update . . . And What's In An Award?

Right now, I'm about halfway through this year's Hugo nominees.  Among Others, and Leviathan Wakes are pretty good.  Since I still have yet to read more than the first hundred pages of Games of Thrones, I'm not really qualified to comment on A Dance with Dragons.  That really just leaves Embassytown with the third installment of Mira Grant's Deadline series.

First of all, the Hugos are not like a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize.  The first recognizes great American works of literature, and the second rewards an author's life work--the Noble Prize, in other words, rewards the entire oeuvre.  

When I was a kid, and played little league, we'd end the season with a pizza party and golden trophies.  Everybody got one and it symbolized your participation much more than your particular contribution.  Now, I'm not saying that the legitimate efforts of highly talents people shouldn't be rewarded

The Hugo Award was set up to reflect popular trends in genre fiction.  As such, it reflects what people like, as opposed to what is good.  Now, don't get me wrong, many of the Hugo awards have been granted to exceptional works of fantasy or science-fiction.  But what makes good genre fiction is not necessarily what makes good literature.  At the heart of it, good literature challenges both the reader and the author.  First the author must transcend the limitations of the medium to explore the bounds of human nature.  The reader, on the other hand, must equally endure.

Michael Cunningham, one of the triad of jury members picking this year's Pulitzer Prize in fiction, explains at the New Yorker some of what went into choosing three titles from more than 300.  What was so remarkable about his article, however, was not the behind-the-scenes work of jury members, but really he philosophy of what a particular award signifies.

He says that "[fiction] involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can’t. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite. The cause of the fire should, to some extent, elude the experts sent to investigate."

What this tells me, however, is that the utterly ineffable parts that Cunningham and his co-jurors suspected of greatness did not ignite a fire in the souls of the board members.  So I'm curious how other awards will fare.

Will, for instance, A Dance With Dragons beat out China Mieville and Jo Walton?  Each of these books has brilliance lurking between their lines, but G.R.R. Martin is the old favorite, and his series has recently received a boost in popularity with the made-for-premium-cable television series based on his books.  Certainly, a spike like this can't be bad for Martin, but is it necessarily good for the Hugos?

Extending this line of thinking a little, Leviathan Wakes is the first book in an expected trilogy.  Should we even consider something admittedly unfinished?

Perhaps it doesn't matter, though.  Maybe this is an opportunity for the community to express its collective happiness with a particular author or work.  Maybe its a moment for sci-fi and fantasy geeks to acknowledge their favorites and just celebrate with one another their own, personal pleasure at being part of the process.  Because ultimately, awards are as much for the audience as they are for the recipient.  That little trophy (be it a golden man, a rocket, or a golden bucket of popcorn) symbolizes that we enjoyed something.  And we want you to know it.

So maybe the Pulitzer board already has life figured out and they don't need the challenge a good work of fiction symbolizes.  Or maybe they're so far removed from the American experience that they no longer recognize it when it's staring up at them from the pages of very fine works.  Either way, we'll still smile, and clap and cheer ourselves on and reward the fiction that we love.